Cpt. F. wrote:I was able to capture from ON to Stage 1. It appears identical to the full YouTube playthrough previously referenced.

The only thing I noticed was the lack of the sound effect that happens as soon as you flick the power switch. Unless you hit record just after that sound. Here's the sound for reference:(https://youtu.be/nwiZ8O0-qvw?t=1m10s)

Still a dump would be awesome to really compare. It's also really cool to see another VB proto show up, it always gives us hope for the next one and to possibly uncover a game that hasn't been found yet =D

Cpt. F. wrote:Is there another finished prototype of this game besides the one I have?

The history of the cart is pretty limited to be honest. At some point it walked out of NOA, that much is certain. May have been passed around, unclear. Then it sat in storage until now, when I asked my associate to let me investigate his old collection. He does not wish to be involved.

I am by no means a VB expert. From what I can recall, the version we have now was compiled from source and no actual cart has ever surfaced. The reason I am interested in the history is that this cart looks production ready yet it has a battery. Bound High! uses a password system. So it has me wondering, what is this cart exactly? Was it a late prototype where they were toying with battery saves? Did someone from Nintendo add to another PCB to build this proto?

I'm really happy to see that this exists. I hope you are able to borrow the community dumper so that the ROM can be compared to the build we are currently enjoying!

I am by no means a VB expert. From what I can recall, the version we have now was compiled from source and no actual cart has ever surfaced.

That's right. The ROM we have was built from slightly modified source code. It was a single switch statement that had to be rewritten to work around a bug in the official C compiler (VUCC). VUCC outputs ISX files, which are binaries with added debug headers for use with the VUE-Debugger. Two separate ISX converters had been written by LameBoy and RunnerPack for this cause. I think we used RP's to convert the final ROM that was released.

Earlier attempts to build using gccVB and VUCC produced two buggy ROMs which ran well on emulators but crapped out on hardware. I didn't release these publically until it came to my attention that someone from the "inner circle" that were given the ROM did some shady business selling the ROM and fake prototype cartridges to people.

All in all, it took almost 7 years from obtaining the source code to finally being able to build a good ROM from it.

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Lester Knight wrote:

The reason I am interested in the history is that this cart looks production ready yet it has a battery. Bound High! uses a password system. So it has me wondering, what is this cart exactly? Was it a late prototype where they were toying with battery saves? Did someone from Nintendo add to another PCB to build this proto?

The SRAM is present simply because it's a generic development flash cart that was meant to be used for any kind of game, with or without save support. I don't think a dev cart without SRAM even exists.

Fun fact: these carts even come with 64 KByte of SRAM (Sharp LH5264TH-L). That's 8 times the size of retail carts' SRAM, which had only 8 KByte.

From some of the reading I've done, it seems it could have been around or one just like it. A stand-alone Bound High! cart was rumored to exist and mentioned in a few posts and PMs that were made public.

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...a 100% fully working version of Bound High that plays flawlessly on the hardware. I have the only copy of this that I know of. It is dumped from an actual cart and not pieced together from code. So far I have spoken to nobody else who has such a thing. Just finding someone with the cart is near impossible, let alone finding someone to let you dump it. This is definitely the real deal. I can provide a video as proof if you would like.

It would be interesting know if the cart you are representing is one in the same.

MineStorm wrote:If you want to dump it, we can send you the community dumper (as I like to call it). It's an adapted retrode 2 unit.

AFAIK Eric (bigmak) or Ben has it at the moment.

Don't what ever you do send the cart to Mellott (he'll steal the ROM and make carts for EBay).

LOL. You're too funny.

Didn't someone say in this very thread that you made Bound High carts for them? You paid the original Bound High developer for that, right? Or was money > ethics? Funny how it's not a problem if you're doing it.